Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Amando Houser sees anti-trans hysteria as akin to the witch trials… so why not give the haters an actual witch?

The transmasculine performer’s alter-ego DeliaDelia is a memorable creation, black of teeth and green in face, the make-up spreading messily over her crushed black-velvet dress and regulation hat. Her tongue flaps disconcertingly from side to side like a lizard and she speaks in a high-pitched child-like sing-song.

This uniquely heightened character also emphasises the pantomime nature of the show, with DeliaDelia getting the room to applaud shit feats of magic or join in the chant to rid her of her curse.

Over the hour, Houser uses all the tricks in the Gaulier clowning playbook to engage with the audience, from emerging enigmatically from off stage to playful crowd interactions, such as recruiting a bestie from the front row to indulge in a silly pillow fight. DeliaDelia’s good-natured but unpredictable, never quite certain how to pitch her human interactions.

She is here having escaped the swamps where she cannot play her beloved basketball (no bounce, you see) with the hope of both joining a team and securing a boyfriend. She tries to seduce several punters, but is either too innocent or too full-on, but the game punters are happy to join in the joke.

There’s a suggestion that she’s ‘tricking’ boys into a relationship, one of several allegorical references to anti-trans tropes that inspire the show. Caught short, she cannot find a suitable bathroom to use (maybe the cauldron on stage would do?) while she is excluded from the sport she loves because the team is only for ‘real girls’, not witches.

The subtext may not be buried deep, but it’s lightly handled. DeliaDelia! The Flat-Chested Witch! is primarily a fun celebration of doing ridiculous things together, whether our green-faced heroine is quite like other girls or not. And Houser is a mesmerising performer, charming their audience by revealing the humanity beneath the weirdness of their alter-ego. They really do cast a spell over the room.

Review date: 25 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Underbelly Cowgate